The subject matter described and/or illustrated herein relates generally to electrical connectors, and more particularly, to electrical connectors having locking collars for mechanically connecting the electrical connector to a mating connector.
Many electrical connectors suffer from a relatively low resistance to disengagement from a mating connector. For example, an axial pull-out force necessary to disengage a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector from another complementary USB connector may be relatively low. Electrical connectors having relatively low axial pull-out forces may be unintentionally disengaged from the mating connector, for example when a cable is inadvertently pulled or snagged and/or when the electrical connector is bumped into. USB connectors that terminate flash drives, wireless antennas, and/or other stand-alone components can be particularly susceptible to unintentional disengagement because the stand-alone component often extends outwardly from the device to which the USB connector is mated. For example, when the device is mobile, such as a laptop computer, or there is heavy traffic around the device, such as with some relatively large machines, the stand-alone component can easily be bumped into by a person or object.
To secure the electrical connector to the mating connector, some electrical connectors include a locking collar that extends around a housing of the electrical connector and mechanically connects to a housing of the mating connector. However, known locking collars are held on the housing of the electrical connector using a separate component from the housing, such as a spring clip, retaining ring, tie wrap, or similar component. Using such a separate component from the housing of the electrical connector may increase a cost, complexity, and/or assembly time of the electrical connector.